Full Slim Beam Review
The Chauvet DJ Slim Beam Quad IRC is a compact, high quality “fixed” three-beam lighting unit, of the type that would suit mobile DJs wanting to light walls or backdrops, as well as anyone looking for beam lighting for small dancefloors, for instance. With fixed colours, built-in programs, music-to-light settings, DMX/remote control, and the ability to daisy chain units together, it’s highly flexible.
First impressions & setting up
The unit is smaller than you might imagine, and the only moving part in its all-metal housing is the part of the casing that contains the three LED beams, which can be angled through 180 degrees by loosening the tighteners on either side of it. The narrow sides of the base contain power and DMX in/out respectively (always nice to see power chaining as well as DMX chaining), and the rear of the base is where you’ll find all of the controls.
You can mount it or place it on the floor (it has mounting fittings, as well as rubber pads for floor-standing), and the fact that it has no moving parts within the lights makes it ideal for places where silence is required such as studios and the like.
In use
Using four buttons (menu, up, down, enter), the LED screen, and the optional remote control, you can use the unit for a number of purposes. There are 15 fixed settings (single-colour washes) and ten programs that range from slowly moving effects to more strobe-like lighting, and you can set the unit to react to sound, adjusting its sensitivity too.
There are also fully programmable DMX settings if you want to incorporate one or more of these units into a more elaborate lighting set-up, although I suspect most of our audience will be happy with using it for backdrop washes, and/or sound-to-light. The three 3W LEDs are bright and the colours are intense, and the edges of the beams are highly pronounced too, meaning the light looks very good in use.
The control LED readout turns off automatically when idle, but jumps back into action as soon as any button is pressed.
Conclusion
Chauvet DJ has a little winner here. It’s well priced, well-made, looks good, and easy to set up and use, and were you to buy a handful and link them together you could create a very impressive backdrop effect for your DJ booth. Mounted, they could happily provide all the lighting needed for a small dancefloor, as the range of programs covers quite a lot of bases.
For mobile DJs, or instances where completely silent mood lighting is required (we’re going to use this one as our studio backdrop for a while and see how it works out, for instance), the Slim Beam Quad IRC would fit the bill nicely.
Talkthrough video
What’s currently in your lighting set-up? Does something like this interest you, and would you want to add it to your rig? Let us know below.
Phil Morse
